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Back in Windows 98 you could set your title bar to be a gradient between 2 colors. That used to be a fun way to customize your look. How did we get into a worl

by nickjj 6y ago

Back in Windows 98 you could set your title bar to be a gradient between 2 colors. That used to be a fun way to customize your look. How did we get into a world where 20 years later with Windows 10 you can't even set a dark title bar color because Windows will say "that color is not supported". There's a cut off when picking a custom color where if you go below a certain shade of darkness it denies you.

kube-system 6y ago
Text visibility? IIRC, Windows 9x would allow you set text and the background to the same color.
- nickjj 6y ago
  > Text visibility? In this case disallowing a darker color creates less contrast and visibility because Windows will use white text behind it. It's also one of those silly limits where one shade is allowed but then you make a 000001 adjustment to it and suddenly it's disallowed. It feels like an arbitrary decision to not let users pick the color they really want. To me it feels like the complete opposite of user empowerment.
userbinator 6y ago
How did we get into a world where 20 years later with Windows 10 you can't even set a dark title bar color because Windows will say "that color is not supported". What's worse, early versions of Win10 didn't even let you set the colour of titlebars at all! https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-restore-color-to-the-title-bars-in-windows-10/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-restore-color-to-the-titl... Presumably it was only put back after massive outrage, which then begs the question of why they even removed the feature in the first place. 8.1, the version immediately before 10, still had the feature. The behaviour of recent (i.e. post-XP or so) MS Windows development teams continues to amaze and puzzle me.
- Arainach 6y ago
  A "consistent design language". The developers who worked on the feature argued against it (among other things it was almost impossible to tell which window was active since "Black on White" isn't easily distinguishable from "Gray on white"). Selfhost feedback said the same thing. It didn't matter - the designers had their mocks, the PMs sided with them, and that was how it shipped. The public response was entirely predictable (for "not being the target customer", it turns out that we knew how they think pretty well) and soon enough we added a toggle for color and APIs to control title bar colors back in TH1.

by nickjj 6y ago

kube-system 6y ago

Text visibility? IIRC, Windows 9x would allow you set text and the background to the same color.

nickjj 6y ago
> Text visibility? In this case disallowing a darker color creates less contrast and visibility because Windows will use white text behind it. It's also one of those silly limits where one shade is allowed but then you make a 000001 adjustment to it and suddenly it's disallowed. It feels like an arbitrary decision to not let users pick the color they really want. To me it feels like the complete opposite of user empowerment.

userbinator 6y ago

How did we get into a world where 20 years later with Windows 10 you can't even set a dark title bar color because Windows will say "that color is not supported". What's worse, early versions of Win10 didn't even let you set the colour of titlebars at all! https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-restore-color-to-the-title-bars-in-windows-10/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-restore-color-to-the-titl... Presumably it was only put back after massive outrage, which then begs the question of why they even removed the feature in the first place. 8.1, the version immediately before 10, still had the feature. The behaviour of recent (i.e. post-XP or so) MS Windows development teams continues to amaze and puzzle me.

Arainach 6y ago
A "consistent design language". The developers who worked on the feature argued against it (among other things it was almost impossible to tell which window was active since "Black on White" isn't easily distinguishable from "Gray on white"). Selfhost feedback said the same thing. It didn't matter - the designers had their mocks, the PMs sided with them, and that was how it shipped. The public response was entirely predictable (for "not being the target customer", it turns out that we knew how they think pretty well) and soon enough we added a toggle for color and APIs to control title bar colors back in TH1.